A small note

6.07.2007

I turned in a chapter of my novel on Tuesday to have it critiqued by the other students. They really liked it and gave me some great suggestions. I still have a long way to go in my writing, but it was encouraging to get some positive feedback.


Margaret Atwood said, "Blank pages inspire me with terror." I understand that. For a long time now, I've said that I like to write, that I want it to be my vocation, that I feel in some way called to do it. But I wasn't writing, not much at least. Perhaps the triumph of today and of the last five months is that now I am writing, painful as it is. To quote another writer, John Steinbeck, "I suffer always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one." The other students liked my scenes and some of the language, but said I need to work on transitions and pace. Once I got over the initial disappointment that they didn't find my work to be the most brilliant thing they had ever read, I began to appreciate the clarity of knowing my shortcomings--that it gives me a direction in which to grow.

One more quote. "All my life; I've been frightened at the moment I sit down to write." That one is from Nobel prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Knowing that he felt this way helps me feel slightly less crazy. Which is a good thing. I think my being able to write centers on accepting, even embracing, failure. As Lamott would put it, writing "shitty first drafts." I think I've written some magnificently shitty first drafts, and will probably churn out another one in the coming weeks. This is heartening--I'm writing.